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Neanderthals, our extinct cousins, are sometimes portrayed as consuming nothing however meat — no fruit, no grains, no greens. But did Neanderthals actually reside on meat alone?
While there’s loads of proof that Neanderthals repeatedly chowed down on meat, a rising physique of analysis reveals our shut evolutionary family, who went extinct greater than 30,000 years in the past, additionally ate different elements of animals apart from their meat, equivalent to fats extract from the bone marrow, in addition to different meals, together with pistachios, lentils and wild peas.
“Multiple independent isotope studies now converge on the same conclusion,” Ludovic Slimak, a paleoanthropologist on the University of Toulouse in France and creator of “The Naked Neanderthal” (Penguin Books, 2023) and “The Last Neanderthal: Understanding How Humans Die” (Polity, 2025), instructed Live Science in an e-mail. “Neanderthals consistently present the isotopic signatures of top-level carnivores.”
At the location of Gabasa in Spain, for instance, analyses of calcium, strontium and zinc isotopes confirmed that Neanderthals have been hypercarnivores who survived primarily on meat and bone marrow. From what we all know, Neanderthals have been apex predators, Slimak mentioned, very like wolves and hyenas, which sit on the prime of the meals chain with no pure predators.
This thought is supported by earlier nitrogen isotope studies, mentioned Hervé Bocherens, head of the biogeology analysis group on the University of Tübingen in Germany.
Nitrogen is available in two steady kinds, or isotopes: nitrogen-14 and the much less widespread nitrogen-15. When animals eat different animals, the heavier nitrogen-15 slowly builds up of their our bodies. That means animals that eat meat have extra nitrogen-15 than plant eaters.
“In most Neanderthal specimens that have been analyzed, the nitrogen-15 content was higher than those measured in large carnivores, such as cave lions, cave hyenas or wolves,” Bocherens instructed Live Science in an e-mail. “The conclusion was that Neanderthals were ‘more carnivore than the carnivores’ (hypercarnivores).”
However, he added, this interpretation is simply too easy. Nitrogen ranges can differ relying on which animals Neanderthals ate, not simply how a lot meat they consumed.
“Woolly mammoths consistently exhibit the highest nitrogen-15 levels among herbivores, probably due to the consumption of plants with high nitrogen-15 levels,” Bocherens mentioned. The knowledge recommend that Neanderthals have been predators that consumed a better proportion of mammoths than they did of different carnivores within the ecosystem, Bocherens added.
A 2025 study supplied a special rationalization for Neanderthals’ unusually excessive nitrogen-15 ranges: They could have eaten maggots, both by chance, within the strategy of consuming rotting meat, or on goal.
“Both rotting meat and especially maggots feasting on the rotting meat have high nitrogen levels and any Neandertal eating those foods regularly would have an isotopic signature that is off the charts,” April Nowell, a Paleolithic archaeologist and professor of anthropology on the University of Victoria in British Columbia, instructed Live Science in an e-mail.
But might Neanderthals survive on a solely meat-based eating regimen?
“They could not if they had a similar physiology as modern humans, which is likely,” Bocherens mentioned. “There is a need for dietary sources of energy.” Eating an excessive amount of protein with out sufficient fats and carbohydrates, which provide most of our vitality, can result in a deadly situation referred to as protein poisoning or “rabbit starvation.”
Their resolution, scientists assume, was fats. At one 125,000-year-old German web site, researchers discovered proof that Neanderthals systematically broke animal bones to extract fats from bone marrow. Animal brains have been one other possible supply of fats, Bocherens mentioned.
When complete carcasses are consumed, together with marrow and fats reserves, an animal-based eating regimen is completely viable, Slimak mentioned.
Neanderthals ate more than meat and fat
Neanderthals may have found creative ways to balance their nutrition. They might have eaten the stomach contents of their plant-eating prey, Chris Stringer, a analysis chief in human origins on the Natural History Museum in London, instructed Live Science in an e-mail.
Scientists agree that Neanderthals additionally ate crops after they have been out there. “There is extensive evidence for plant eating by Neanderthals,” Nowell mentioned. That proof contains precise plant stays found in caves, microscopic traces left on stone instruments, and even plant residues preserved in dental plaque and fossilized feces.
Food stays present in modern-day Israel recommend Neanderthals ate legumes, acorns and pistachios, Nowell mentioned. In Greece and Iraq, plant stays recommend they soaked, pounded and ground lentils, nuts and grasses — a type of meals preparation which will have helped take away bitter flavors. In Gibraltar, researchers discovered the charred remains of edible plants like wild olives and stone pine nuts. In Italy, starch grains found on stone tools trace that Neanderthals have been even making a form of flour.
At El Sidrón Cave in Spain, chemical analyses of dental plaque revealed that Neanderthals ate crops like yarrow and chamomile, doubtless for medicinal functions. And, at an open-air archaeological web site known as El Salt in Alicante, Spain, researchers discovered significant levels of plant sterols (fat in crops which are just like ldl cholesterol) in fossilized Neanderthal feces.
In hotter areas, Neanderthals doubtless gathered a wider vary of plant foods, together with seeds, starchy root greens like tubers, and even dates within the warmest areas, mentioned Robert Power, a analysis fellow within the School of Archaeology at University College Dublin.
Although Neanderthals have been expert hunters who relied closely on animal meals, “they varied their diets depending on where and when they lived, adapting to local foods and changing with the seasons,” Nowell mentioned.
Neanderthal quiz: How much do you know about our closest relatives?
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